


What Survives the Fire

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s02e03 Life Born of Fire, Spoilers for Life Born of Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 00:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1367401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh God, I think she gave me a truth drug."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Survives the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> James' quote is from Journey of the Magi by TS Eliot

I am waiting for my sergeant outside his hospital room while he gets himself ready.

When he appears he is in the same clothes he had been wearing for his date with Zoe and the air is once again choked with the smell of smoke. 

He is checking his pockets to see what survived the fire. His movements are slower than usual. The drug working its way out of his system, I suppose.

“Ready, Jim?” I ask. “Got everything?”

A moment or two more of pocket patting produces a door key, “Yes sir, thank you.”

“You knackered your back carrying me out of that house,” he says, noticing me use the armrest as leverage to stand.

“You’re not the stick insect you appear to be.”

“I’ll try to stay off the Yorkie bars in future,” he says, but apologetically.

“Stay out of the bedrooms of our suspects and I’ll be happy.”

We are driving past a row of shops when he asks if we can make a stop.

“Don’t tell me you’re after cigarettes. Haven’t you inhaled enough?”

“Have a heart, sir. The hospital was making me go cold turkey.”

It is a warm June day and we are near a pub I know with a garden at the back. After he stocks up, I offer to buy lunch. When I bring the drinks, he is leaning on a railing, smoking and looking out at the river.

I sit at the table he has bagged for us and leave him to it. Perhaps the brush with death is preoccupying him. It is bothering me, I have to admit. A bit too close a call for my liking.

In some ways my sergeant reminds me of my old inspector; that same dogged focus and magpie intellect. He’ll be as good a detective once he learns to trust his instincts. But his defences are not armour plated like my inspector’s were, his skin is not nearly thick enough. I’ve learned in recent days just how breakable he is.

I remember holding on to him until I was sure he wouldn’t try to plunge back into the fire, until the medics took him, unconscious, from my arms.

“I am so sorry,” he says from the silence. “About everything.”

“I know you are.”

“You can trust me, sir.”

“I know, sergeant. I know.”

I get up and join him by the railing. He is watching a rowing boat splashing awkwardly upstream and I watch with him. He finally speaks with the fist of his free hand pressed to his forehead.

“How do I live with this now?” He asks. He thinks he caused the death of his friend. By some measure he probably did; failed to prevent it certainly.

“You’ll do what you think is right, just as you did then.”

“Did I? You don’t think it was more a way of dealing with my own crap?”

I rest my hand on the close crop of his hair and he closes his eyes.

“When I was a kid,” he says bowing his head to take a last drag of his cigarette before putting it out. “Things got - complicated.”

I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve no idea what happened to make the simple giving and receiving of affection such a confusing business but he still, all these years later, seems to buckle under the weight of it.

I wait to see if he will tell me more, but he has, as usual, shut down this line of enquiry.

“Forgive yourself, James,” I say. “You’re a good man. You’re one of the best.”

The suggestion only seems to increase his misery. I decide to cheer him up.

“Did I ever tell you about the two lads I went with?”

“Sir?” He breaks into astonished coughing.

“Before Val, of course, and before I signed up. There were a couple of lads. They only lasted a night or two each, the times being what they were. But I would say, if you were so inclined, it had much to recommend it.”

There was a dark haired Spanish boy, he was the first. He brought me to his attic bedsit on a night of thundering rain and east winds. I still remember the taste of him, the feel of his hands in my hair.

My sergeant is gazing at me in wonder.

“Give over,” I say. “I was young once, you know.”

He stops staring and turns back to the river with a small, pleased smile. He has taken away my confession as if it were a nugget of gold to hoard and treasure.

My second boy was from the university, he was as tall as a tree and blond with it. He knew the Old Testament and the Iliad and, given enough brown ale, would recite any number of sonnets. Perhaps I won’t tell my sergeant about that lad. Not that it isn’t diverting to make Hathaway blush.

~~

I take him home but drop him at the door. I’ve got to get back to the station. The paperwork on this bloody case could take me up to retirement. I’m home by eight though, in time to hear my doorbell go.

My sergeant is there. He has showered and changed but his eyes are glazed and if he were a suspect I would be asking for a blood test.

“I wish I wasn’t so rubbish at life,” he says.

“You’d better come in.”

He stands in the kitchen rocking gently on his heels and smiling vacantly. “Also, hello.”

“I hope you didn’t drive.”

“Walked. The ways deep and the weather sharp.” I don’t need a blood test; there is wine and poetry on his breath. He stops, frowns, “Something about camels.”

“Coffee?”

“Can’t I have beer?”

“No.”

I start the percolator and, while it brews, he sinks into my sofa, lying back and squinting at the ceiling light. I help him out by switching it off and turning on a lamp.

“You didn’t believe them when they said it was wrong?”

I don’t need to ask what he’s talking about.

“I was nineteen, I didn’t care.”

“And you just thought - he’s nice, why not? You’re amazing.”

“There was a quantity of Dutch courage involved, if I recall.”

“I love the Dutch.”

I put a mug of coffee down on the table next to him and he shuffles up to drink.

“Did you ever consider,” I ask. “That your real problem might be over-thinking things?”

“You’re not the first person to say that to me.”

“Imagine.”

“Well, you’re right. No more thinking.” He puts his cup aside and slides back, heavy lidded. “But when I’m impulsive people try to set me on fire.”

“Just the once. Don’t exaggerate.”

He chuckles, closes his eyes, falls asleep and jolts awake.

“You haven’t seen my phone by any chance have you, sir?”

“Did I go into a burning building to get it, you mean? No, sergeant.”

“Lost my numbers.” His eyes close again. “Thought it might be evidence or something.”

“No one’s collecting evidence against you.”

Not if I have anything to do with it, anyway. Which is making the paperwork on this case quite tricky.

“But you should,” he says softly. “You really should.”

Another quick doze and he is back.

“But don’t worry, I remember most of my numbers.”

“Okay, I won’t worry.”

“And I won’t need all of them, will I? They were in the snow.”

“Your numbers?”

“The camels, sir. Sore-footed. Lying down in the melting snow.” He sighs, leans forward to peer into his coffee cup, finds it empty and tilts back again, spreading his long fingers across his face. “Blood on my hands now,” he says. “All those people. They’re all I can see when I close my eyes.”

“Now you listen to me, James –“

“Career stuffed. Sore-footed. Let you down. Hurt your back. So ashamed.”

When he stops rambling he is deeply asleep. I leave him to rest, if rest it is. I have a bite to eat and watch the news while he sleeps next to me; all arms and legs and anxious muttering like an unhappy spider.

He finally wakes when I try to put a quilt from the spare room over him. He has a brief tussle with it and then groans, “Sorry.”

“You’re all right.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Lie down if you want.”

He shakes his head and sits forward scrubbing his hand across his eyes and checking the pocket of his jeans for cigarettes, “I’ll go home.”

But then he is suddenly crying. The tears turn into sobs. We’re both taken by surprise. He waves me away.

“I’m not – I think I’ve still got some of that whatever-it-was in my system.”

I go and get him a glass of water and when I come back he is wiping his face on his sleeve.

“If there’s anything else I can do to embarrass myself you will tell me, won’t you? I want to be thorough.”

“What am I going to do with you?” I say, sitting down next to him. “You’re breaking my heart and I didn’t even think that was still possible.”

He looks up at this, “I would never do that. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you. Oh God, I think she gave me a truth drug.”

“James, what’s this?”

“Quite a bad idea.” He is silent for a time. “But, in for a penny.”

He hesitates, then lifts a hand to touch my face with his fingertips. When I don’t react he kisses me, lightly on my lips. It is as gentle and as diligent as you might expect from Sergeant Hathaway; coffee-tasting, sleep-warm, cigarettes and house fires. I should react, but instead I shut my eyes; I am nineteen again and a tempest is closing in.

When I open my eyes, he is there, watching me through fresh tears. I take his head in my hand and bring him closer until he rests against me. He shudders in my arms and I cannot soothe him.

“There’s no need for all this,” I say, releasing him so I can look at him. I brush a stray tear away with my thumb. “It was a canny kiss but I won’t hold you to it.”

“Hold me to it, hold me in your hands, hold my breath.”

“God only knows what’s churning round in your system.”

“Benzodiazepines, Sainsbury’s Pinot and remorse, sir. You think I kissed you because I’m having a breakdown. Can you really not know? Can you possibly not already know how I feel about you? I thought I was transmitting it on every bloody frequency.”

I can’t keep up with him. He has gone from saying nothing to saying everything, and he might as well be saying it in ancient Greek for all the sense he’s making. And Mr Mystery evidently thinks he’s an open book.

When I don’t speak he looks defeated. He eventually gets to his feet, getting ready to go. “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “Forgive me.”

“Don’t go, James,” I finally say. “Get your smoke, but I don’t want you to go.”

~~

I hear him unlock the back door and go outside into the yard. It is getting late, the night is settling in. The neighbours stop their machinations, their opening and closing of doors and only the occasional car goes by, its headlights making shadows on the living room ceiling. It is the time of the evening when I often think of Val, when it is hardest to be alone.

Did I know? Was I conscious of my sergeant politely knocking at my heart? I’d swear not, but now the cards are on the table, the idea is not the shocking one it ought to be. It is more like the moment when a case is solved; when all the pieces fall into place and the story tells itself.

And do I have anything to offer in return? Since I almost lost him a surprising answer is rising up. Perhaps Zoe had something right. A fire destroys but also clears the land and enriches the soil so that something strong and new can flourish.

I go outside. The sun has long since set but some of the warmth of the day survives. It is a moonless darkness and our only light is reflecting softly through the kitchen window. My sergeant is on the garden chair, but he slips off it to sit on the decked floor and make room for me. He draws up a knee and wraps an arm around it.

The burning embers of his cigarette make flickering points of colour in the half-light. He crushes it out in the saucer we keep for this purpose and rests his head on his arm.

I watch the easy way he uses his body. Desire and the impossibility of the whole idea strike me simultaneously.

“What could you want with me?” I ask. “I’m not daft. I know how old I am.”

“You’ll never be as old as me.”

“James.”

“You’re going to be kind to me and then throw me out, so please don’t make me give you a list of the things I find beautiful about you.” He unfolds himself to lean against the garden chair and gaze upwards at the cloud-filled nothing above. “Though I do have one at home.”

My sergeant sits quietly at my feet waiting to be rejected. His courage awes me, but that’s not new. I stroke his hair, the shaved prison cut that makes him look so ridiculously young. He becomes still under my hand. Is it possible I possess the means to bring him happiness; to ease the turbulence of his soul?

I’m not sure how long we stay this way, how long it takes me to understand that if he were not here with me there would be something terribly amiss. But by the time I speak his head is resting against my leg and I am certain. 

“Will you sleep beside me tonight, do you think?” I ask.

“Yes, sir,” he says. “Thank you.”

I lean down and kiss first the sharp edge of cheekbone and, as he turns, his mouth. “It’s quite all right, sergeant. It’s quite all right.”

End


End file.
